Methods and systems are known for the automatic industrial production-line and mass-produced production of pizzas. These methods and systems essentially include the following work phases: preparation of dough including rising of the dough, extruding the dough creating a dough strand, cutting the dough strand into individual dough portions, processing the dough portions to flattened pizza bases, adding seasonings and toppings, baking, packaging for consumption within the expiration date or, respectively, for deep freezing.
Systems employing the above-referenced methods are numerous for mass-production. Existing automated systems have accelerated pizza production by employing pre-treated dried granulate with seasonings and toppings applied to a pre-determined, large number of pizzas of the same variety on a continuous belt with baking in a tunnel oven. Some existing systems accelerate production by employing pre-produced, precooked and/or frozen dough portions and toppings.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an automatic pizza making method and system that provides fast, individual and completely fresh pizza preparation according to individual order placement.
Dough Mixer
Dough mixers for producing dough used in preparing foods are known which use one or two screw conveyors, or rotating mixing arms within fixed or rotating containers with vertical or angled axis or kneading elements rotating within a closed housing with a horizontal axis. Also known are smaller mechanical devices for preparing dough in the household; generally these include a cylindrical container with a vertical axis within which one or more agitator blades operate on a single drive shaft attached coaxially to the container axis.
Information relevant to attempts to address dough mixers can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,486,049; 4,630,930; and 5,322,388. However, each of these references suffers from one or more disadvantages.
The known devices are not designed for preparing individual dough portions per work cycle within relatively short periods of time and by charging with ingredients in individual portions; further, known devices do not provide that each dough portion prepared and discharged for shaping leaves no ingredients or dough residue inside the device. The known devices are also not designed to perform a periodic, completely automatic sterilization of the kneading chamber and elements.
Also known in the art is the problem of charging kneading devices with relatively exact volumetric amounts of flour or flour-like ingredients which are hydroscopic. Such problems result from the tendency of flour-like materials to form accumulations or agglomerates inside the container, that varying the material volume above the metering mechanism strongly affects the metering process and that it is difficult to achieve an even filling and/or emptying of the metering chamber.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a dough mixer of simple, compact design which can be automatically sterilized, has an essentially cylindrical chamber with kneading rotation occurring about a horizontal axis to accommodate direct charging of consistently accurate and pre-metered amounts of material per work cycle while preventing accumulation of material in the container and/or metering chamber, the dough mixer quickly preparing, on demand, one individual dough portion suitable for preparation of one pizza by subsequent shaping, garnishing and baking.
Tomato Sauce Dispenser
Systems are known for mechanical metering and garnishing of pizza with tomato sauce or other liquid components. Most of these devices supply the sauce by tube, under pressure generated by a pump. Generally these systems are mounted on a production line above a passage area of the dough base to be garnished, the garnishing process occurring by free fall. Accordingly, uniform distribution of the sauce to the dough base requires several tubes or nozzles and air jets evenly spaced above the garnishing area to evenly distribute the sauce on the dough base.
Known liquid dispensing systems have several disadvantages. Systems with a plurality of tubes and nozzles are unsuitable for liquids such as tomato sauce as tomato sauces are rarely homogenous in fluidity and texture. As such, the individual nozzles fed from one single supply tube rarely dispense equal quantities of the sauces. In addition, dispensing sauce from a plurality of tubes and nozzles creates cleaning and sanitation problems as the sauce often drips from the nozzles after product flow ceases. To prevent the product from spoiling, mold from forming and bacteria from breeding during downtimes, tubes must be exchanged often, resulting in increased production costs.
Known liquid dispensing systems using air jets require high product homogeneity, accurate product metering and precise jet calibration based upon texture and volume of the liquid to be distributed. Air jet systems often distribute excessive product, insufficient product or provide intermittent distribution while continually experiencing cleaning problems.
Other existing free falling systems require that the underlying dough base rotate about a vertical axis with sauce distributed in a spiral manner. These systems allot all movement to the dough base, whereas dispensing nozzles remain stationary. One disadvantage of these systems, if integrated into a production line for pizza, is the complication or exclusion to using traditional conveying systems to transport the dough base through the production line due to the requirement of rotating the dough base during sauce application. Thus, conveying systems must provide the additional capability of rotating the dough base over a portion of the production line. Or, the conveying system must transfer the dough base to a separate device to spin the dough base. Further complications arise when the production line requires that the dough base be heated during conveying and/or garnishing.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a tomato sauce dispenser that provides even sauce distribution on a dough base (regardless of sauce homogeneity), that performs in a production line having traditional conveying systems and/or conveying systems applying heat to the dough base during transport thereof through the production line, and also facilitates easy cleaning and maintenance.
Oven
Electric ovens employing electrical resistance, microwave generators (magnetrons), infrared lamps or induction units as a heat source for cooking relatively thin cakes, such as pizza and focaccia, are known, as are ovens employing one or more such heat sources in combination, such as ray or wave sources. These ovens are designed to cook or heat fresh or frozen foods, which may be precooked, in a relatively short time.
Cooking time is important for industrial food-production processes and for automated machines that heat or cook food on the spot. Such machines commonly use cooking systems employing microwaves and/or infrared rays, sometimes in combination with electrical resistance. However, it takes approximately 80 seconds to cook and brown pizzas having a diameter of about 270 mm and total weight of about 320 g to 360 g.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an oven that can fully cook and brown fresh (not precooked) food in a shorter time period, without sacrificing the organoleptic and nutritional properties associated with traditional cooking.
Automatic Cutting Device
A number of devices exist for automatically cutting pizza or focaccia into slices, using plates provided with blades which operate vertically like a dinking die on the pizza being cut. The existing devices only cut the pizza, requiring specific devices to then transfer the cut pizza to the take-out box or other packaging.
Furthermore, the known devices are not designed for easy cleaning and/or replacement of the parts that come into repeated contact with the pizza, thereby creating cleanliness and hygiene problems with both the cutting device and the transfer device.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a simple, combination cutting and transfer device which is easy to clean and uses some of the cutting movements to transfer the pizza, thereby expediting the pizza making process.